Owl Epilogue

I was so delighted when I went out to fill the bird table this morning. I was greeted by this spirit overseeing the front deck. I'm pretty sure it's the same owl. How beautiful it is!

An Owl Story

 

Barred Owl, picture taken last year

I was sitting at the piano this afternoon when a bird flew by the window. Since I was focused on the music, it was only a fleeting sense of movement out the corner of my eye so I don't know what kind of bird it was but suspected a Blue Jay because they often fly by on their way from the front yard to the back yard. Immediately, the sound of something crashing into one of the bird room windows shattered the peace. I decided I'd better have a look and glancing down from the bird room (it's a good five feet above ground), there lie a beautiful, motionless Barred Owl, head back, wings spread out. Ohh, nooo. It was such a sad sight, a magnificent bird lying there dead by all appearances. It put the kibosh on the musical euphoria of the moment. I thought I saw it take a breath, the breathing of an injured bird, so I went downstairs with the broom to see if I could reach it from the cellar door but the snow was way too deep and I was sinking in up beyond my knees. The broom reached it though and I used it to flip the owl's head as it was sort of flopped back. I realized there was nothing I could do and it would perish. It made me so sad. It was taking a few breaths, and by the time I got back upstairs it occurred to me that maybe it had only been knocked out, and perhaps, just possibly, it would come to. So I kept going to the window to look for positive developments, alas not. But finally, it moved it's head! It had been rendered unconscious! It got up on it's feet and drew it's wings in and sat there for a good ten minutes more then flew to a tree on the front lawn where it remained for the rest of the afternoon. I breathed a glad sigh of relief.

Stitching progress and notes

 

The walkway lights are trying to keep ahead of winter!

Steady progress is being made on the tapestry. I have moved beyond the halfway point!

On a large, repetitive project like this I have found that reading about the craft (needlepoint in this case) is a good motivator. History, techniques, pattern books, they all inspire me, hence boost my interest in keeping the stitches going. I have also found that having set times in the day for working on it is a boost. At the moment my favorite times to stitch are right after breakfast--usually for about an hour--before moving on to piano practice, and again for a few hours in the evening when I can watch ridiculously silly Britcoms on DVD while stitching. It helps that I've seen all the episodes before so I don't need to look at the screen all that much.

Suspending the frame from the ceiling is working out really well. I re-rigged so I can pull it up and away when I want freedom of movement around the sofa. It might seem a bit silly, but it's great! It's rigged so as to be easy to turn over, making the back readily accessible for finishing off a thread. (I prefer to finish off in back rather than park the thread to the side and wait until it's covered by other stitches.)

The tapestry is on large scale mesh: 7 to the inch (the yarn is doubled), and I felt like I wanted something a little finer to work on in spare moments, so I actually started a cross stitch. I found another kit at the thrift shop last week for $7, holiday themed and that's ok because it will likely take me all year to finish it. I like it, and at the moment the biggest trouble is finding the tiny little holes from behind the aida cloth. I keep poking away at it and hope that it will get better with practice. In the meantime, I'm turning the work around to see where the holes are quite often. But it's in hand (not in a hoop) so quite convenient to do so.

So far all I've been stitching are tent stitches because there are a lot of them on the door, so that's very much like needlepoint with the difference being that I do needlepoint in the continental style and the cross stitch as half cross stitch. I'm enjoying it.

A picture of the pattern:

Needlepoint progress

Over the last week and a half I've managed to get the top border of the tapestry done. This does not include the green band that runs around the outside, I will do that when the rest is all done. It has gone surprisingly quickly. I attribute that to the manner in which I work. Firstly, I work on a small area at a time, maybe four inches square and I will fill it in completely. This size is just about doable in one day. If the area is much bigger it seems to drag on, if it's much smaller it's too fiddly. About a four inch square works well for me and makes the work progress--or at least seem to progress--faster. Secondly, within the area  I work one color at a time, filling in all the gold, then all the raspberry, followed by all the burgandy, then all the yellow.

Here is the new section to be working on now. I'm glad to be working on the lilies now. I'll start with the right edge border then proceed with an area as described above which I've outlined in red, and continue r to l across the canvas. Then on to the next 4 or so inches until I reach the bottom.

The crewel wool I ordered from England arrived last week. It sat around a few days until I reminded myself of the importance of starting. Once a project is started it's on it's way, but if it never starts it never gets finished!

I am working from this book from 1962, "The Art of Crewel Embroidery" by Mildred J. Davis.

A sample spread showing some different stitches:

So I dug out some linen--black--that I had purchased some years back with the intention of sewing a shirt. But that didn't happen so I cut a 12" strip off one side. It's very long, 3 or 4 yards long. I will practice the crewel stitches and exercises on this strip. It can be rolled up and will become my crewel scroll. I've already drawn a couple of small leaves and made my first attempts at satin stitch. One successful, the other, meh. I will be doing a whole series of leaves over the next few weeks, exercising several different stitches and techniques, along with other motifs.

The Husband's Complaint

by Mary Eirwen Jones

I hate the name of German wool

In all its colours bright

Of chairs and stools in fancy work

I hate the very sight!

The rugs and slippers that I've seen,

The ottomans and bags

Sooner than wear a stitch on me

I'd walk the street in rags.

Oh, Heaven preserve me from a wife

With "fancy work" run wild

And hands which never do aught else

For husband or for child.

Our clothes are rent, our bills unpaid,

Our house is in disorder,

And all because my lady-wife

has taken to embroider!

😀

A New Year... what to work on?

 Happy New Year!

The local fauna have come round to offer their greetings in this new year of 2025... 

That picture was taken one beautiful night last week when the moon was it's fullest.

I have spent time these past few weeks pondering what I would like to focus on now that the holidays are behind us. But first... I had a bit of citrus fruit left from the festive season and they were starting to get old, the skins were toughening up. So I decided to slice what I had and dehydrate them. I'm left with a lovely bunch of rounds to put away until next season when I'll string them together with cranberries and small pine cones to make a garland. There is a grapefruit, a couple oranges, and a lemon.

So, what to work on? Options include quilting: there are two applique tops needing to be quilted. Focusing on the pieced quilt that is started but not done. Something completely new and different. A lot of options.

I've decided that I want to finish the large, 39" x 53" needlepoint that I started a few years ago and ended up setting aside. I really, really want to finish it this year. To that end I've spent the past week and a half picking up where I left off, and will hopefully be able to sustain continued focus on it until every last stitch is taken (there are a bit more than 98,000 stitches in it).

It's currently almost a third done. Once I've stitched the top border (this week and probably beyond) it will definitely be one third finished. I've inserted a red arrow to indicate where I'm up to in stitching:

I've changed my setup for working on this. Because of it's size, it really needs to be on a frame. But frame holders are big, bulky affairs which seem to always be in the way. So, I've suspended the work from the ceiling! I love it. Right in front of the sofa at a height that is comfortable (and adjustable). Two small hooks in the ceiling (which I want to eventually replace anyway) hold everything up. I'm now toying with the idea of employing a few pulleys so I can draw the whole affair up and away! That would be very cool, and I think very doable. This is a perfect setup for this time of year when I'm in the house a whole lot more than I'm out of it. The sofa is front of the fire, so it's all cozy. And I can watch DVDs while working.

And, there is another project soon to be under way. I have wanted to do some Crewel embroidery. I have a wonderful older book on the subject which demonstrates many stitches, and covers topics like designs, colors, etc. My plan is to stitch a series of blocks using the various stitches and then sew the blocks into a quilt. This will let me try out all the different types of stitching and play around with different designs and colors. I've already ordered a bunch of crewel wool from Appleton's in the UK. 

For clarification, "crewel" work refers to wool thread being worked on linen cloth. It does not refer to any specific type of design. There is, though, a popular aesthetic of crewel work called Jacobean which is readily recognized: Oversized leaves, undersized animals, odd color choices. It's very attractive.